Groups make case for social protection safety nets policy

The Executive Director, Africa Network for Environment and Economic, Economic Justice, ANEEJ, Rev. David Ugolor, and host of other civil society organisations, CSOs, have called on the federal government to institutionalise national social investments programme and implementation of the anti-corruption in Nigeria.

The groups said the call is to strengthen the Social Protection Cross-Learning Summit which is to be officially launched by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo SAN.

Ugolor in a press statement signed on behalf of other CSOs noted that efforts in the first phase of the allocation of the Abacha's recovered loots to support the poor can only be achieved if the MOU between Nigeria and Swiz government is signed to law.

According to him: "Our nation has recently been named the world’s poverty capital. Nigeria is faced with multiple problems of insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, rising inequalities, economic recession, religious intolerance, farmers/herdsmen clashes, and social discrimination.

“Many Nigerians live below the poverty line. Yet, there is unimaginable amount of our nation’s wealth in the hands of a few individuals obtained through corrupt practices.

"As CSOs united in ensuring social justice for the poor and marginalised, we hereby appeal for the institutionalization of the National Social Investment Programme, NSIP, in Nigeria. The NSIP serves as a workable tool for steadily lifting people out of poverty and ultimately realising the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs".

He noted that United Nations, in its many global conferences and more recently in its 2015 programme for Sustainable Development Goals recognised the need for social protection and the reduction of inequalities, people’s social rights as well as their link with environmental policies and rights.

"We are guided by the provisions of other legal instruments covering more specific rights of children, women and indigenous people, as well as a right to development. These rights are universal, indivisible and inalienable. These rights cannot be realised in the face of crippling poverty as we find in communities and villages across Nigeria today," he added.